Iceland’s 4 day a week ( work related)

[Hushmental]

Just want to know what everyone’s opinion is on this one. They have proved that working just 4 days a week resulted in increased productivity and happy employees. I would love if that’s implemented but I know it’s far from happening anytime soon. So my poll is Yabu if you don’t support it and yanbu if you think it will work.

People working 100% aren't suddenly making proportionally more than me per hour

But only because your employers are now paying you the same salary for fewer hours as well. Upthread, some PPs were suggesting that the financial impact of a 4 day week could be reduced because lots of people work part-time anyway, so nothing would need to change for them. But, in practice, it's impossible for employers to give an effective pay rise to full-time employees (by reducing their hours) without giving part-timers the same benefit. So everyone's pay rate per hour goes up.

For organisations that can just reduce their working day, that doesn't matter, as long as productivity stays the same. But, if you are running a hospital, a train line, a water company or any other service that has to stay open for the same number of hours as now, it's a huge cost pressure. The NHS wage bill is about £48 billion. If we reduce normal working hours by 20%, without reducing salaries, that bill rises by another £10 billion. Same problem for all other industries/services that can't reduce their hours.

Seemingly the Icelandic trial results haven’t been reported accurately and consequently it’s not been quite as successful as we are led to believe, apparently.

theconversation.com/the-success-of-icelands-four-day-week-trial-has-been-greatly-overstated-164083

For organisations that can just reduce their working day, that doesn't matter, as long as productivity stays the same.

I think even that might be tough - as I said, I do a full-time workload in 90% hours, which I think is probably the case for everyone in my organisation who works 0.9 (which is actually quite a lot of people at my level - it's a very female workplace and people commonly do this '4.5 days in 4' pattern when they return from mat leave). This works ok because I do indeed find I'm able to be more productive in the time I have and so fit (cram) it in. But there's a limit to that elasticity - if the organisation cut everyone's hours by 20% so mine would effectively become 0.72 - basically 3.5 days a week - then I couldn't do the same workload any more. At some point the 'work fewer hours but do it more productively' idea has to fall down because you just aren't doing enough hours no matter how hard you work in them.

Civil service here -I have worked 'compressed hours' 4 days over 5 for a decade.. I can recommend a 4 day week and a 3 day weekend .

We have always done this at my work (NHS outpatients). 37.5 hours compressed into 4 days. People have different days off. There are more appointments available for patients because we start earlier and finish later than the 9-5 ‘norm’. Love having an extra day off, it’s great for making appointments and getting jobs done.

I think what your job entails plays a big part.

My job currently requires a lot of report writing, creativity and problem solving. It's one of those things that if I'm not in the mood or dont have the concentration, I can't force it. I'm freelance and work 5/6 days a week long hours, if I actually tracked my productivity properly and counted the time that i was actually doing work work and not staring into space or going on a YouTube rabbit hole, it probably could easily be condensed into 4 days a week. By Friday my ability to do anything that requires much thought is almost zilch, I'll spend 4 hours writing something I could do in an hour on Monday, yet I still sit at my desk the whole time trying to get it done.

However when I had a hands on job there were no peaks and troths with motivation and momentum, if something had to be done there and then there was no two ways about it, however less thought had to go into the task but it applied more physical effort. My productivity in that role would have definitely been more over 5 days than 4, and theres not really anyway you can condense that.

So that opens up another argument. That potentially more creative and decision making jobs could be more productive over 4 days, and more hands on labour roles are better over 5. And it just so happens that the former is typically associated with higher pay and the latter with lower pay.

The key is that whatever full time is has to attract the same total after tax full time salary and pension and holidays etc. etc. - actually the same, taking shift allowances etc into account where relevant - and obviously the same pro rata for part time employees (2 days per week would be 50% not 40%).

I can't see why it wouldn't work for healthcare in a 24/7/365 environment, except that more employees would be needed - it'd be incredibly shit to say everyone except those in healthcare gets a 4 day week and would lead to a lot of healthcare workers, especially the lower paid ones and those who've invested less time training, leaving healthcare and fewer young people choosing to work in healthcare - cue crisis impacting everyone a few years down the line.

As everyone knows from care in the community and inclusion in education, ideologically brilliant ideas which should improve quality of life and society as a whole are usually twisted into cost cutting measures by government and corporations and end up making everything immeasurably worse, especially for the groups whom they were sold hardest to as the start of a brave new world...

I think if you have asked for reduced, or compressed hours, you are probably very productive, as you appreciate how nice it is to have that "extra" day off.
I suspect, within a year or so of "everyone" working fewer days, and it slowly becoming "normal" to work 4 days and not 5, the novelty would wear off and - if you aren't there "proving yourself to be as valuable as FT colleagues" incentive isn't there, then the productivity levels would start to drop as people just began to accept a 3 day weekend as the norm after the novelty wore off.